John Norman - Rogue of Gor

I swallowed hard.

“I am not familiar with steel,” I said, as pleasantly as I could manage.

“You should not carry it, then,” said the man. Several of his fellows laughed.

“The combat, as has been made clear,” said Tasdron, his voice shaking, “is to be unarmed.”

“Pick up your blade,” said the fellow to me. I saw the point of the short sword move slightly. He gestured to my clothes, and pouch and blade, which lay nearby.

“I cannot fight you with steel,” I said. “I am not skilled with it.”

“Run,” whispered Tasdron.

“Close the exits,” said the fellow to some of the men with him. Four of them rose up, one going to the side door, one to the door to the kitchen, and two to the main threshold. They, stood there. Their steel, too, was now drawn. At the table, still sitting, were two other men. One of them seemed in his presence as though he might be the group’s leader. He observed me, and quaffed paga.

“Pick up your blade,” said the fellow.

“No,” I said.

“Very well,” said he. “The choice is yours.” He stepped about his table and then, carefully, watching me, advanced. He stopped about ten feet from me. Then, suddenly, he kicked a table from in front of him to the side, clearing a path to me. Two men scrambled away from the table. A paga slave, cowering in the background, screamed.

“I am unarmed,” I said.

He advanced another step. I watched the point of that blade move.

“He is new in Victoria,” said Tasdron, desperately. “Take his clothes, his money, his things. Let him live!”

But the fellow did not even glance at Tasdron. He took another step closer.

I backed away, and then felt the tables behind me, against my legs.

“I am unarmed,” I said.

The fellow grinned, and advanced another step.

“Permit me to seize up my weapon,” I said.

He grinned again, and advanced yet another step. I knew I did not have time to turn and clutch at the weapon in its sheath on the table, with my pouch and clothes, and even had I been able to reach it and remove it from the sheath I did not think it would do me much good. I saw how this man handled steel, and I saw that the blade itself was much marked. It had seen a plenitude of combat. Before him, even with the blade in my grasp, I would have been, I knew, for all practical purposes, defenseless.

“I am unarmed,” I said “Is it your intention to kill me in cold blood?”

“Yes,” said the fellow.

“Why?” I asked.

“It will give me pleasure,” he said I saw the blade draw back.

“Hold!” called a voice.

The fellow stepped back, and looked past me. I turned about. There, about twenty feet away, in a dirty woolen himation, stood a tall, unshaven man. Though he seemed disreputable he stood at that moment very straight.

“Do you, Fellow,” said he, addressing me, “desire a champion?”

The man was armed. Over his left shoulder there hung a leather sheath. He had not deigned, however, to draw the blade.

“Who are you?” asked the fellow who had been threatening me.

“Do you desire a champion?” asked the man of me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Who are you?” demanded the fellow who had been threatening me.

“Do you force me to draw my blade?” asked the tall man. The hair on the back of my neck rose when he had said this.

“Who are you?” demanded the man who had threatened me, taking another step back.

The man did not speak. Rather, with one hand, he threw back the himation, over his shoulders. There was a cry in the tavern.

I saw that the fellow wore the scarlet of the warrior.

“No,” said the man who had been threatening me. “I do not force you to draw your blade.” He then backed away. When he reached his table he thrust his own blade angrily into his sheath. He then, with the fellows who had guarded, the doors, left the tavern.

“Paga, paga for all!” called Tasdron. Paga slaves rushed to pour paga. “Music!” he called. Five musicians, who had been near the kitchen, hurried to their places. Tasdron, too, clapped his hands twice and a dancing slave, portions of her body painted, ran to the sand.

Unsteadily I went to the table of the tall man. He seemed to pay me small attention. When the girl poured him paga his hand shook as he reached for it. He lifted it, suddenly, spilling some to the table, to his lips. He was shaking. “I owe you my life,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Go away,” he said. His eyes then seemed glazed. No longer did he seem so proud and strong as he had before, in that brief moment when he had confronted the fellow who had threatened me. His hands shook on the paga goblet. “Go away,” he said.

“I see that you still wear the scarlet, Callimachus,” said a voice.

“Do not mock me,” said the man at the table.

I saw that he who spoke was he whom I had taken to be the leader of the ruffians at the far table, one of whose number had threatened me. He himself had neither supported nor attempted to deter the fellow who had threatened me. He held himself above squabbles in common taverns, I gathered.

I took him to be a man of some importance.

“It has been a long time since we met in the vicinity of Port Cos,” said the fellow who had come to the table.

The man at the table, sitting, he who had saved me, held the goblet of paga, and said nothing.

“This part of the river,” said the standing man, “is mine.”

Then he looked down at the sitting fellow. “I bear you no hard feelings for Port Cos,” he said.

The sitting man drank. His hands were unsteady.

“You always were a courageous fellow, Callimachus,” said the standing man. “I always admired that in you. Had you not been concerned to keep the codes, you might have gone far. I might have found a position for you even in my organization.”

“Instead,” said the man sitting at the table, “we met at Port Cos.”

“Your gamble this night was successful,” said the standing roan. “I would advise against similar boldnesses in the future, however.”

The sitting man drank.

“Fortunately for you, my dear Callimachus, my friend Kliomenes, the disagreeable fellow who left the tavern, earlier, does not know you. He does not know, as I do, that your eye is no longer as sharp as once it was, that your hand has lost its cunning, that you are now ruined and fallen, that the scarlet is now but meaningless on your body, naught but a remembrance, an empty recollection of a vanished glory.”

The sitting man again drank.

“If he knew you as I do,” said the standing man, “you would now be dead.”

The sitting man looked into the goblet, now empty, on the table. His hands clutched it. His fingers were white. His eyes seemed empty. His cheeks, unshaven, were pale and hollow.

“Paga!” called the standing man. “Paga!” A blond girl, nude, with a string of pearls wound about her steel collar, ran to the table and, from the bronze vessel, on its strap, about her shoulder, poured paga into the goblet before the seated man. The fellow who stood by the table, scarcely noticing the girl, placed a tarsk bit in her mouth, and she fled back to the counter where, under the eye of a paga attendant, she spit the coin into a copper bowl. There seemed to me something familiar about the girl, but I could not place it.

“Drink, Callimachus,” said the standing man. “Drink.”

The seated man, unsteadily, lifted the paga to his lips.

Then he who had stood by the table turned about and left. I backed away from the table.

“The fellow who threatened me,” I said to Tasdron, the proprietor of the tavern, “he called Kliomenes. Who is he?”

“He is Kliomenes, the pirate, lieutenant to Policrates,” said Tasdron.